HARVINDER SINGH PHOOLKA"...not only the leadership but even the community failed the victims." |
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Thursday May 17, 2012 06:31 PM EST |
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Sevaa of Motion
By Anju Kaur, SikhNN staff writer, Washington Bureau
Posted: Friday, February 25, 2011 | 02:11 pm
Gallery
Gallery
Sanjay was flat as a board. His spine was fused together and so were his hips. A particularly debilitating and painful type of arthritis had left him unable to move for the last 8 years. He could no longer work as a tailor to support his polio-afflicted wife and two young sons.
Then these pugree-waalay American doctors showed up to help.
Sanjay was among 47 patients selected for free joint replacement surgery to be performed by a visiting surgical team at the Dayanand Medical College and Hospital in Ludhiana.
It was late January, the day of the surgery. He was lying in a hospital bed, ready. But the doctors could not get a breathing tube into his mouth because his neck could not bend. He was sent out of the operating room.
“It’s just not my luck,” he told Daljeet Singh Saluja, the internist on the American surgical team, and Prabhjot Singh Likhari, the team’s coordinator. “Can I just stay in the ward tonight, and go home tomorrow?”
Sanjay was strong. He did not cry.
“We have got to do something,” Prabhjot Singh remembers saying. They took him back into the operating room. And this time, the anesthesiologist tried with great difficulty to maneuver the tube through his nose, down his stiff neck and into his lungs. It worked. The surgery was on.
Although Sanjay’s hips could not be replaced with an implant, the surgeon was able to remove a part of his diseased hips so that he could sit in a wheel chair or walk with crutches.
“Now I can thread a needle of a sewing machine and earn a living,” he said.
He was crying.
“The day we left, Sanjay sat up for the first time in years,” said Simon Mears, the Baltimore surgeon who operated on Sanjay’s hips. “Sitting with his wife and young son, it was a very special moment.”
Sanjay’s inner strength was remarkable yet typical of all the patients, he said.
“They put their faith in a group of visiting doctors to help them and did so with grace.”
Two Sikh and four American orthopedic surgeons led a volunteer team of 45 medical personnel to restore the quality of life of these poor people of Punjab who previously could not walk.
The team was organized by the Maryland chapter of Operation Walk, founded by Harpal Singh Khanuja, an orthopedic surgeon, and his wife, Maria. They were joined by Gurminder Singh Ahuja, also an orthopedic surgeon, and Prabhjot Singh, a businessman. All are from Baltimore.
The original Operation Walk USA was founded by Lawrence Dorr, an orthopedic surgeon, in 1994. Harpal Singh volunteered for a trip with him to El Salvador in 2007, after which he and his wife formed Operation Walk Maryland.
The volunteer non-profit provides free hip and knee replacements every year to financially disadvantaged patients around the world who suffer from hip and knee joint diseases.
Since its founding in 2008, the Maryland team has been to Lima, Peru and Quito, Ecuador. This year, they went to Ludhiana.
“We felt that it would be fantastic to go back there and do more for our community, too,” said Prabhjot Singh, chairman of the board of directors. “We go all over the world…. This time we decided: Let’s to do Punjab.”
He called on a grade-school friend who is now the chairman of the board of directors at the Ludhiana hospital. Both agreed.
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